WoW was the first mega-hit (previous highs were always sub million in NA, WoW maxed at I think 3 or 4 mil in NA). When it was in its prime, F2P was considered an afterthought, it's only in the last 2 years or so that f2p has become such a prime model. Or I should say the hybrid model which works like extended trials.
Don't mistake games like SWTOR, Eq2, LoTR as f2p though. It's a misnomer, they are all sub games that have f2p parts to them.
Wow will eventually have to go F2p if they want to keep their numbers, they just had a larger pool of sub players that it didn't matter if they lost 4 million (which they have now) subscribers.
Don't know how you got to a point where it's "the only successful" MMO when EVE is still going strong for so many years and FFXI is still a sub game after over 10 years. So WoW is the most successful in terms of subs but it's not the only one.
First of all, WoW is not the only succesful MMO with a subscription... but that aside, WoW simply had not alot of competition back when it was released and it is actually rather well developed and has solid endgame-content.
The mass of MMOs these days are released unpolished and aren't polished enoughed. People play them for some 3 month and then move on as it got boring after the all the content was done.
Look at SWTOR... I maxed three characters and managed to equip all of them with the best gear, which was T2 back then... all within the first three month after release. Same goes for TSW, allthough I only made one char, as you could allready do everything with a single one. After I had aquired everything 10.4/10.4 there was nothing to do anymore but to wait for the next content-patch or 10.5, etc...
WoW has been around for so long, that there's tons of content, and people who are not hardcore-raiders do actually enjoy the older content, so the game can keep alot of casual players attached.
Other MMOs could've been succesful, but they were rather unfinished and buggy in the beginning, like AoC for example, which had actually very good raiding-content for endgame T1-T3. The hardmodes in RotG were challenging and fun aswell. Anyways, the game never got off due to the many bugs and the very high hardware-requirements.
Developers need to take their time, and not rush the release because they're pressured by a publisher or their shareholders. This is the only way to polish the game enough and to have all hands free for content after release. Good and fun content is the most cruicial part really, as people get bored pretty fast.
Its interesting you mention Polish, endgame, and to a lesser degree difficulty...as bonuses for WoW.
When WoW released, the difficulty was childish compared to other MMOs at the time, the endgame was nonexistant, and it was one of the worst launches as far as stability in history. It has had horrendous problems with hacking and account security.
The very things that made WoW succesfull (like the easy difficulty) are what MMOs are still trying right now, the problem is WoW capitalized first, built up the stable of content, and has coasted ever since. Other games with comparable content : Eq, Eq2, UO...are either out-dated, or lacking in one aspect. Eq2 for example is basically the same game as WoW, it released a month before WoW and had the first large-scale voice-overs. It however never had solid pvp.
Good question, and I think there are two simple answers.
Content. World of Warcraft has far more content than any other MMORPG ever released, beyond question. It has a phenomenal amount and diversity of content, from traditional single-player question, to end-game raiding, player-versus-player, crafting, vanity collecting, exploring, holidays and special events, etc.
The reason WoW is king of content has to do with the way Blizzard builds their games. For anyone who has done map design in Warcraft 3 or Starcraft 2, you would know that Blizzard builds an incredible set of tools to go with their games, that allows rich content to be built quickly. Blizzard has been able to crank out an incredible quantity of content for WoW because they built the game on a solid code framework that allowed for rapid development of new content. That, over seven years of development, means an unequaled amount of content.
Every time I hear about a new game advertising how much content it has, I just roll my eyes. Say what you want about WoW, the sheer volume of content can't even be touched by its competitors.
Time Invested. "I can't leave World of Warcraft, I've invested too much time into it already." I frankly find this to be stupid, but it's very real. In finance, it's called a "sunk cost" - you're never going to get back what you've already lost, so why keep investing in something if it isn't working for you? But it's a real part of human psychology, and players will continue to play a time investment game like WoW even after the enjoyment of it is long gone.
But then there's the question: how was Blizzard able to keep millions of players going for years, to the point that they're reluctant to leave because they're so invested in the game? The answer: yep, content. Blizzard rolled out enough content to keep players busy until the expansions started coming on a regular basis, and that was enough to keep them around for good. (Other games, in contrast, routinely roll out enough content for only a few months - and then wonder where all their subs leave so quickly.)
Implications? Any game that wants to ask for a monthly subscription is going to need to have a tremendous amount of content - not just grind, but actual interesting things to do, that will keep players occupied for at least a year. If they don't meet that threshold, they won't be able to hold subscriptions.
The alternative, of course, is to give the players tools to create their own content . . .
Originally posted by doodphace "only successful sub"? EVE and SWTOR would like to have a word with you...
EVE doesn't fit this discussion well, because all the old players who know the ins and outs of the games now play for free because of the PLEX system. There are literally thousands of players who support 10-20 accounts based on market manipulation and other isk producing game features. EVE maybe has 500k subscribers which means if there are 20,000 players with 10 accounts, they account for 40% of the population. Whereas WoW has at least 8mil unique subscribers, as there really is no point in multiple accounts for the vast majority of the player base.
SWTOR has a free to play model, and it saved the game because without it, the game would be a lot less populated and more subscribers would have left from lack of players. Whether it equates to ghost towns, bad economy or long que waits. The F2P they introduced is not the best out there, but it certainly was all they needed to maintain a game that was plummeting quickly while they scrambled to fix and improve.
Wow, as someone says has something for everyone. It is fairly easy on computers as far as resources. It's friendly to children and adults, and it came out during a time when other games were more focused on the challenges instead of accessibility to more people. WoW streamlined MMO's and the majority of the people in this world want their game times to be fun and relaxing, not a second job.
Regarding EVE, I cant really comment on the pure speculation of how much of the 500k consists of multiple accounts. To me, thats the same argument people use regarding WoW's Asian sub numbers when tying to discredit WoW's success. I have no opinion either way though, because there is no way any of us actually know.
For SWTOR, regardless of your assessment on why its been successful, there is no doubt that having a stable 500k subs is successful.
Simple...WoW is has so much content, it's worth the subscription fee. Though I haven't played in years, I feel it's still worth a subscription fee. Even though it's a gear grinding bore, there's just so much you can do otherwise in the game, making it worth the sub.
People like to play with their friends. Unlike other genres mmos make players invest quite a lot of time into the game. This means that you can’t really play two different mmos at a time, and this makes in the end all players gravitate towards the one big game.
Just imagine a group of friends that play WoW. If there is a new game some of them will like to check it out but others do not like to loose the progress they made and start all over. So the novelty of the new game will capture them for some weeks but the entire time their friends and their old maxed out chars will wait for them in WoW and nag them to com back. Also the group will likely draw new players into WoW.
Another reason for WoWs dominance is that it is just the real thing. What is the cooler car a Ferrari Testarossa or a Toyota Supra? WoW is just the quintessential themepark mmo, it has 10 years of content and has copied almost every innovation that other developers have come up with.
These are the reasons for WoWs dominant position on the market that gives them the luxury to stay with a payment model that won’t draw in as many new players as P2W but is earning them much more from their existing player base.
Its interesting you mention Polish, endgame, and to a lesser degree difficulty...as bonuses for WoW.
When WoW released, the difficulty was childish compared to other MMOs at the time, the endgame was nonexistant, and it was one of the worst launches as far as stability in history. It has had horrendous problems with hacking and account security.
The very things that made WoW succesfull (like the easy difficulty) are what MMOs are still trying right now, the problem is WoW capitalized first, built up the stable of content, and has coasted ever since. Other games with comparable content : Eq, Eq2, UO...are either out-dated, or lacking in one aspect. Eq2 for example is basically the same game as WoW, it released a month before WoW and had the first large-scale voice-overs. It however never had solid pvp.
That may be the popular thinking, but I would challenge it. WoW was short on end-game content in the first few months, but the leveling up process was lengthy enough - and players were still taking their time learning the game - that it was a moot point for all but the most hard-core of guilds. By the time the bulk of the player base started approaching the level cap, Blizzard had ironed out problems with the Molten Core and it was ready to go - and by the time the bulk of the player base started making its way through the Molten Core, Blizzard had follow-on raid instances being rolled out.
Your point about "difficulty" is debatable. MMORPGs are not, as a rule "difficult", they just require a lot of time invested. They really only get genuinely difficult in competitive PvP, or in a few of the end-game raids (particularly when run without proper preparation). WoW certainly required less time invested than its competitors when it was released - but that's a relative thing, and I think anyone who's been around for a while will readily tell you that the time required to level up in WoW on release was far greater than for what is typical of more recent MMORPGs.
And end-game progression on WoW on release was very slow. You could run the Molten Core as soon as you hit 60, but you'd get burned to a crisp if you weren't prepared. Preparing for it was a tedious, lengthy process of running lesser dungeons to gear up - but even that was only just enough to get past the first few bosses. Progressing all the way to the end required many, many runs of the first part of the instance.
And I think players liked it. Yes, it was tedious, and yes, progression was slow by today's standards - but it didn't seem to discourage the player base any. They stuck around for the Burning Crusade expansion, when the player base probably hit its peak. The player base only really started to drop off after the game truly started slipping into "easy mode" with much faster leveling and more accessible end-game raiding.
The general conclusion that WoW succeeded because it was easier to play may in part be true (the controls and abilities were certainly more intuitive than many of its competitors, before or since), but not with respect to the time and commitment needed to progress in the game. It was nearly as much of a commitment as its competitors upon release, and far more of a commitment than its competitors now - or even what the game itself has become since.
We have our WoW bashers and lovers. I go back every once in awhile. I can only take it for a week. lol
Out of all these games released after. With no cash shop and still a sub. How do they stay the best? All the rest of the games have to fall to f2p or launch at f2p.
Just another opinion I like to add. I am hoping Wildstar is the next game to stay strong as a sub.
actually... i'd say your opinion does
there are actually quite a few "successfull" games.
i mean, you wouldn't call VW a failure just because ferrari is better, or?
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
except for those other successful sub games. heck, any game that has a sub option that's still running is a successful sub game. the idea that you need WoW numbers to be successful is part of what's wrong with this industry.
WoW was initially successful because it had a popular franchise behind it and the game was unique for its time. Now it's mostly successful due to players already being invested, nostalgia and community relationships. WoW doesn't really have much going for it apart from the large amount of content and high quality due to making so much revenue over the years. Honestly, most people just skip 90% of the content and run dungeons constantly these days anyway.
We have our WoW bashers and lovers. I go back every once in awhile. I can only take it for a week. lol
Out of all these games released after. With no cash shop and still a sub. How do they stay the best? All the rest of the games have to fall to f2p or launch at f2p.
Just another opinion I like to add. I am hoping Wildstar is the next game to stay strong as a sub.
WoW is not the only game thats still sub. FFXI is still sub to play after all these years. There are actually quite a few others. Rift was, but soon will be f2p.
We have our WoW bashers and lovers. I go back every once in awhile. I can only take it for a week. lol
Out of all these games released after. With no cash shop and still a sub. How do they stay the best? All the rest of the games have to fall to f2p or launch at f2p.
Just another opinion I like to add. I am hoping Wildstar is the next game to stay strong as a sub.
WoW is not the only game thats still sub. FFXI is still sub to play after all these years. There are actually quite a few others. Rift was, but soon will be f2p.
WoW is the only game that still have 8M+ of them. Tell me, is there another game that has even half that number of subs?
For SWTOR, regardless of your assessment on why its been successful, there is no doubt that having a stable 500k subs is successful.
Well it really comes down to a person's opinion of successful. 9 million subs vs 500k is a big contrast. And on top of that, didn't SWTOR have more pre-orders or beta applications than any other MMO ever?
I guess you can make the analogy of if a single guy makes a new phone and sells 10k of them he feels its a success, but if Apple were to only sell 10k new iphones, it would be a catastrophic failure to them. In the above case, EA/Bioware is "apple" and not a small startup.
We have our WoW bashers and lovers. I go back every once in awhile. I can only take it for a week. lol
Out of all these games released after. With no cash shop and still a sub. How do they stay the best? All the rest of the games have to fall to f2p or launch at f2p.
Just another opinion I like to add. I am hoping Wildstar is the next game to stay strong as a sub.
WoW is not the only game thats still sub. FFXI is still sub to play after all these years. There are actually quite a few others. Rift was, but soon will be f2p.
WoW is the only game that still have 8M+ of them. Tell me, is there another game that has even half that number of subs?
It is living on its initial success, and those who refuse to give it up since they've already invested their life on it. They lost around 2 million subs in the last couple of months, and have been decreasing all the same. It is not a "successful" P2P model anymore, but a statue of the past that is bound to erode.
For SWTOR, regardless of your assessment on why its been successful, there is no doubt that having a stable 500k subs is successful.
Well it really comes down to a person's opinion of successful. 9 million subs vs 500k is a big contrast. And on top of that, didn't SWTOR have more pre-orders or beta applications than any other MMO ever?
I guess you can make the analogy of if a single guy makes a new phone and sells 10k of them he feels its a success, but if Apple were to only sell 10k new iphones, it would be a catastrophic failure to them. In the above case, EA/Bioware is "apple" and not a small startup.
Regardless of all the "ya, but it should have done better, EA is a big company, they spent billions developing it" pass off comments, 500k subs after a year in a world where WoW exists, is very good. It might be greatly below what their expectations were, but that doesnt discount the fact that 500k subs is successful.
We have our WoW bashers and lovers. I go back every once in awhile. I can only take it for a week. lol
Out of all these games released after. With no cash shop and still a sub. How do they stay the best? All the rest of the games have to fall to f2p or launch at f2p.
Just another opinion I like to add. I am hoping Wildstar is the next game to stay strong as a sub.
WoW is not the only game thats still sub. FFXI is still sub to play after all these years. There are actually quite a few others. Rift was, but soon will be f2p.
WoW is the only game that still have 8M+ of them. Tell me, is there another game that has even half that number of subs?
It is living on its initial success, and those who refuse to give it up since they've already invested their life on it. They lost around 2 million subs in the last couple of months, and have been decreasing all the same. It is not a "successful" P2P model anymore, but a statue of the past that is bound to erode.
How is 8M subs not "successful"? So what if it is living on its initial success. It has such a huge initial success that the coat tail is 8M subs.
Again, is there another game has even half that number of subs? with or without any initial success?
Don't get me wrong, i don't play WOW anymore .. but 8M sub is 8M sub.
We have our WoW bashers and lovers. I go back every once in awhile. I can only take it for a week. lol
Out of all these games released after. With no cash shop and still a sub. How do they stay the best? All the rest of the games have to fall to f2p or launch at f2p.
Just another opinion I like to add. I am hoping Wildstar is the next game to stay strong as a sub.
WoW is not the only game thats still sub. FFXI is still sub to play after all these years. There are actually quite a few others. Rift was, but soon will be f2p.
WoW is the only game that still have 8M+ of them. Tell me, is there another game that has even half that number of subs?
It is living on its initial success, and those who refuse to give it up since they've already invested their life on it. They lost around 2 million subs in the last couple of months, and have been decreasing all the same. It is not a "successful" P2P model anymore, but a statue of the past that is bound to erode.
How is 8M subs not "successful"? So what if it is living on its initial success. It has such a huge initial success that the coat tail is 8M subs.
Again, is there another game has even half that number of subs? with or without any initial success?
Don't get me wrong, i don't play WOW anymore .. but 8M sub is 8M sub.
Considering that as per Blizz, more people have left the game than are currently playing (a statement made when the game was at 10 mil), means the majority of its players were not around from day one...hense, its not riding on its initial success.
Another fun fact...the vast consensus of WoW players has been that BC was WoW's best state/xpac....and Wotlk was its worst. In reality, BC had 8 million players, Wotlk had 12. MoP is back to 8.3....if thats a symbol of anything other than the game slowly declining after 9 years, or the fact that its in a state that BC was in, only time will tell.
Comments
Simple ;
Timing.
WoW was the first mega-hit (previous highs were always sub million in NA, WoW maxed at I think 3 or 4 mil in NA). When it was in its prime, F2P was considered an afterthought, it's only in the last 2 years or so that f2p has become such a prime model. Or I should say the hybrid model which works like extended trials.
Don't mistake games like SWTOR, Eq2, LoTR as f2p though. It's a misnomer, they are all sub games that have f2p parts to them.
Wow will eventually have to go F2p if they want to keep their numbers, they just had a larger pool of sub players that it didn't matter if they lost 4 million (which they have now) subscribers.
You don't know much about other games if you believe that...
http://us.blizzard.com/store/browse.xml?f=c:0,f:1,c:5
Aside from GW2, Wow is still the only game with an acceptable amount of quality assurance.
P2P is not dying, games worth paying for are dying.
Its interesting you mention Polish, endgame, and to a lesser degree difficulty...as bonuses for WoW.
When WoW released, the difficulty was childish compared to other MMOs at the time, the endgame was nonexistant, and it was one of the worst launches as far as stability in history. It has had horrendous problems with hacking and account security.
The very things that made WoW succesfull (like the easy difficulty) are what MMOs are still trying right now, the problem is WoW capitalized first, built up the stable of content, and has coasted ever since. Other games with comparable content : Eq, Eq2, UO...are either out-dated, or lacking in one aspect. Eq2 for example is basically the same game as WoW, it released a month before WoW and had the first large-scale voice-overs. It however never had solid pvp.
Good question, and I think there are two simple answers.
Content. World of Warcraft has far more content than any other MMORPG ever released, beyond question. It has a phenomenal amount and diversity of content, from traditional single-player question, to end-game raiding, player-versus-player, crafting, vanity collecting, exploring, holidays and special events, etc.
The reason WoW is king of content has to do with the way Blizzard builds their games. For anyone who has done map design in Warcraft 3 or Starcraft 2, you would know that Blizzard builds an incredible set of tools to go with their games, that allows rich content to be built quickly. Blizzard has been able to crank out an incredible quantity of content for WoW because they built the game on a solid code framework that allowed for rapid development of new content. That, over seven years of development, means an unequaled amount of content.
Every time I hear about a new game advertising how much content it has, I just roll my eyes. Say what you want about WoW, the sheer volume of content can't even be touched by its competitors.
Time Invested. "I can't leave World of Warcraft, I've invested too much time into it already." I frankly find this to be stupid, but it's very real. In finance, it's called a "sunk cost" - you're never going to get back what you've already lost, so why keep investing in something if it isn't working for you? But it's a real part of human psychology, and players will continue to play a time investment game like WoW even after the enjoyment of it is long gone.
But then there's the question: how was Blizzard able to keep millions of players going for years, to the point that they're reluctant to leave because they're so invested in the game? The answer: yep, content. Blizzard rolled out enough content to keep players busy until the expansions started coming on a regular basis, and that was enough to keep them around for good. (Other games, in contrast, routinely roll out enough content for only a few months - and then wonder where all their subs leave so quickly.)
Implications? Any game that wants to ask for a monthly subscription is going to need to have a tremendous amount of content - not just grind, but actual interesting things to do, that will keep players occupied for at least a year. If they don't meet that threshold, they won't be able to hold subscriptions.
The alternative, of course, is to give the players tools to create their own content . . .
Regarding EVE, I cant really comment on the pure speculation of how much of the 500k consists of multiple accounts. To me, thats the same argument people use regarding WoW's Asian sub numbers when tying to discredit WoW's success. I have no opinion either way though, because there is no way any of us actually know.
For SWTOR, regardless of your assessment on why its been successful, there is no doubt that having a stable 500k subs is successful.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
People like to play with their friends. Unlike other genres mmos make players invest quite a lot of time into the game. This means that you can’t really play two different mmos at a time, and this makes in the end all players gravitate towards the one big game.
Just imagine a group of friends that play WoW. If there is a new game some of them will like to check it out but others do not like to loose the progress they made and start all over. So the novelty of the new game will capture them for some weeks but the entire time their friends and their old maxed out chars will wait for them in WoW and nag them to com back. Also the group will likely draw new players into WoW.
Another reason for WoWs dominance is that it is just the real thing. What is the cooler car a Ferrari Testarossa or a Toyota Supra? WoW is just the quintessential themepark mmo, it has 10 years of content and has copied almost every innovation that other developers have come up with.
These are the reasons for WoWs dominant position on the market that gives them the luxury to stay with a payment model that won’t draw in as many new players as P2W but is earning them much more from their existing player base.
That may be the popular thinking, but I would challenge it. WoW was short on end-game content in the first few months, but the leveling up process was lengthy enough - and players were still taking their time learning the game - that it was a moot point for all but the most hard-core of guilds. By the time the bulk of the player base started approaching the level cap, Blizzard had ironed out problems with the Molten Core and it was ready to go - and by the time the bulk of the player base started making its way through the Molten Core, Blizzard had follow-on raid instances being rolled out.
Your point about "difficulty" is debatable. MMORPGs are not, as a rule "difficult", they just require a lot of time invested. They really only get genuinely difficult in competitive PvP, or in a few of the end-game raids (particularly when run without proper preparation). WoW certainly required less time invested than its competitors when it was released - but that's a relative thing, and I think anyone who's been around for a while will readily tell you that the time required to level up in WoW on release was far greater than for what is typical of more recent MMORPGs.
And end-game progression on WoW on release was very slow. You could run the Molten Core as soon as you hit 60, but you'd get burned to a crisp if you weren't prepared. Preparing for it was a tedious, lengthy process of running lesser dungeons to gear up - but even that was only just enough to get past the first few bosses. Progressing all the way to the end required many, many runs of the first part of the instance.
And I think players liked it. Yes, it was tedious, and yes, progression was slow by today's standards - but it didn't seem to discourage the player base any. They stuck around for the Burning Crusade expansion, when the player base probably hit its peak. The player base only really started to drop off after the game truly started slipping into "easy mode" with much faster leveling and more accessible end-game raiding.
The general conclusion that WoW succeeded because it was easier to play may in part be true (the controls and abilities were certainly more intuitive than many of its competitors, before or since), but not with respect to the time and commitment needed to progress in the game. It was nearly as much of a commitment as its competitors upon release, and far more of a commitment than its competitors now - or even what the game itself has become since.
actually... i'd say your opinion does
there are actually quite a few "successfull" games.
i mean, you wouldn't call VW a failure just because ferrari is better, or?
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
polish - obviously
lots of choices - you can play many ways, LFD, LFR, arena, BG, pet battles, scenarios
WoW is not the only game thats still sub. FFXI is still sub to play after all these years. There are actually quite a few others. Rift was, but soon will be f2p.
WoW is the only game that still have 8M+ of them. Tell me, is there another game that has even half that number of subs?
Well it really comes down to a person's opinion of successful. 9 million subs vs 500k is a big contrast. And on top of that, didn't SWTOR have more pre-orders or beta applications than any other MMO ever?
I guess you can make the analogy of if a single guy makes a new phone and sells 10k of them he feels its a success, but if Apple were to only sell 10k new iphones, it would be a catastrophic failure to them. In the above case, EA/Bioware is "apple" and not a small startup.
It is living on its initial success, and those who refuse to give it up since they've already invested their life on it. They lost around 2 million subs in the last couple of months, and have been decreasing all the same. It is not a "successful" P2P model anymore, but a statue of the past that is bound to erode.
Regardless of all the "ya, but it should have done better, EA is a big company, they spent billions developing it" pass off comments, 500k subs after a year in a world where WoW exists, is very good. It might be greatly below what their expectations were, but that doesnt discount the fact that 500k subs is successful.
Your question is somewhat flawed:
How is WoW the only successful sub? VCR's no longer exist today... does that mean they were a failure?
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
How is 8M subs not "successful"? So what if it is living on its initial success. It has such a huge initial success that the coat tail is 8M subs.
Again, is there another game has even half that number of subs? with or without any initial success?
Don't get me wrong, i don't play WOW anymore .. but 8M sub is 8M sub.
Considering that as per Blizz, more people have left the game than are currently playing (a statement made when the game was at 10 mil), means the majority of its players were not around from day one...hense, its not riding on its initial success.
Another fun fact...the vast consensus of WoW players has been that BC was WoW's best state/xpac....and Wotlk was its worst. In reality, BC had 8 million players, Wotlk had 12. MoP is back to 8.3....if thats a symbol of anything other than the game slowly declining after 9 years, or the fact that its in a state that BC was in, only time will tell.